Getting your site listed in Google UK

Many webmasters have found that their website does not rank in www.google.co.uk. For UK sites this is a massive problem as they will be losing most of their home traffic. It has been estimated that nearly 40% of users click the "pages from the UK" button to narrow down their search on Google.

There are of course measures you can take to help you get UK listings including:

1. Change to a .co.uk domain name
Probably the most obvious change is to change to a .co.uk domain name. Google will be able to identify your country of origin by your TLD (top level domain). This however is not the best option if you already have a powerful .com domain name that is achieving good listings.

2. Obtain UK Hosting
If your site is already quite well established on the internet you will probably want to keep the .com domain name. Your next option to try and obtain listings in www.google.co.uk is to obtain UK hosting. Google also uses your host’s location to identify your country of origin. Be careful here though as you might see some keywords listing in www.google.com drop slightly.

3. Submit your site to Google local UK
It is actually possible to submit your site to Google using Google local. Here you submit your site and its address (which will be UK based) to Google local. After submission your site will be added to Google maps. This submission will inform Google that you are a UK based company, which may help your site get UK listings.

4. Obtain links from UK sites
Google also looks at the origin of your inbound links to determine your locality. If you source more UK links this will help Google determine that you are a UK based company. You could also enforce this by submitting your site to relevant UK based directories.

5. Put your address on the site
This is the most obvious change. Simply mention your UK address somewhere on your website. Once Google indexes your site it will pick up your UK address, which may well help you to obtain UK listings.

My advice for new sites to obtain UK listings is to follow all of the above. Sites which are already established on the internet should only follow points 2-5

Paul
SEO Project Manager

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